No Longer Human ( PDFDrive )

147
letters r-i-c-e. Rice. I'm hungry. Bring me something
to eat."
"Why don't you go get it yourself?" My voice
shook with a rage I had almost never before betrayed.
"All right. I'll go downstairs, then Yoshiko and
I will commit a crime together. Personal demonstration
is better than empty debates. The antonym of
crime ie rice. No—it's beans!" He was so drunk he
could barely articulate the words.
"Do as you please. Only get the hell out of here."
He got up mumbling incoherently. "Crime and
an empty stomach. Empty stomach and beans. No.
Those are synonyms."
Crime and punishment. Dostoievski. These words
grazed over a corner of my mind, startling me. Just
supposing Dostoievski ranged 'crime' and 'punishment'
side by side not as synonyms but as antonyms.
Crime and punishment—absolutely incompatible
ideas, irreconcilable as oil and water. I felt I was
beginning to understand what lay at the bottom of
the scum-covered, turbid pond, that chaos of Dostoievski's
mind—no, I still didn't quite see . . . Such
thoughts were flashing through my head like a revolving
lantern when I heard a voice.
"Extraordinary beans you've got here. Come
have a look."
Horiki's voice and color had changed. Just a